Curbing a weird foreign fascination for architectural xenocentrism

Besides setting off a feeding frenzy in building materials, it has left Chinese cityscapes dotted with an amazing panoply of shapes that are sometimes awesome and sometimes plain awfulET Bureau | February 25, 2016, 18:00 IST

It has indeed been a long march from the ethnocentrism of the Middle Kingdom to the xenocentrism of new China — especially when it comes to architecture.

Besides setting off a feeding frenzy in building materials, it has left Chinese cityscapes dotted with an amazing panoply of shapes that are sometimes awesome and sometimes plain awful.

From giant trousers and teapots to phallic towers and birds nests, these buildings certainly are a far cry from the genteel traditional silhouettes of ancient China. Therefore, the sudden diktat by the Chinese authorities to builders to desist from erecting "oversized, xenocentric and weird" structures is a startling step back. After all, architectural oddities — including replicas of famous structures — can be deemed one of the distinguishing facets of the last three or four decades.

As this proclivity is not limited to China, this proscription will be a dampener for all those builders from Gurgaon to the Gulf countries who aspire to pepper landscapes with structures that closely conform to the first two if not all three adjectives used in the prohibitory directive. Of course, much manoeuvring can be done with such broad definitions, given the ingenuity of human beings to get round tiresome strictures. So, the Chinese may yet get to indulge their apparent fascination for architectural xenocentrism.

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